Sun Microsystems is focusing on Opterons and Solaris x86 for a good reason. Sun has figured out a way to make x86 hardware cheaper than anyone else. Sun is hoping that by leveraging its cost advantages the company will be able to ensure the success of its x86 hardware and Solaris.

This is one area where Sun can benefit from other open source projects. It should be much easier to port an open source Linux (or better yet, FreeBSD) driver to Solaris than it would be to write one from scratch.